raise our voices, heavenward
by Mira-Jade
Summary: It was a wish, a half hoped for thing – to become something beautiful from the notes he wrote, the monuments he built, the silent devotion he had, and always would, hold. 50 Sentences
1. Part I

"**raise our voices, heavenward"**

**Genre**: Angst, Romance  
><strong>Rating<strong>: T  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ensemble Cast

**Summary**: It was a wish, a half hoped for thing – to become something beautiful from the notes he wrote, the monuments he built, the silent devotion he had, an always would, hold . . .

**Notes**: This year I am playing around with the 50 sentence challenge over at another site - which prompts one to write four stories a month based on a set of fifty prompts. The fifty prompts result in one sentence each, and then a whole story is formed from the snapshots provided in those sentences. Obviously, this challenge will slaughter grammar, and bring out the seldom seen fandom from the muse - but is a fun and curious thing that has already been incredibly interesting. If you wish to, you can track my progress in my profile.

For tables III and IV of May, I chose to go the Phantom route, and doing so resulted in rather lengthy sentences (apparently I had lots to say), but they were a fun mashing of words to string together. This first set deals entirely with Erik's backstory (a great deal of which is taken from Susan Kay's novel), and the second set deals with the more familiar events at the Palais Garnier. As always, that is a melting pot of every version, and then some.

I hope you enjoy my humble contribution to so lovely a tale.

**Disclaimer**: Nothing is mine, but for the words.

* * *

><p><em><strong>01. Settled<strong>_

Madeleine de Vere spent the last month of her pregnancy unable to move from her bed, grieving for the loss of her husband even as she sang lullaby's to the swell of her stomach, her siren's song seemingly reflected and completed by the quivering of her womb as the child within her responded to her voice.

_**02. Seam**_

She looked down at her child's face, searching for similarities between the little countenance and her own – repulsed as she took in the warped features her body had born – the boy had not her husband's nose (for he had none at all), or her own blue eyes (his were mismatched, unearthly green and gold), he had not even a babe's cry as he watched her calmly, as still as the corpse which he so resembled.

_**03. Similar**_

"Who is that?" the frightened child cried as he looked into the mirror, seeing the monster in the reflection (and not yet understanding that the monster was him), and Madeleine felt her violent rage dissipate, her bruising grip on the boy's arm falling – she no longer needed to force her son to look, for now he couldn't look away.

_**04. Scrupulous**_

"Wear the mask, and the monster can never hurt you," Madeleine's hands trembled as she pressed the black cloth against her Erik's face, his eyes trusting and so inhumanly bright in night's approaching light as he let her hide him away once more.

_**05. Static**_

It was a static in his head, a pounding in his veins that made him tap his fingers and hum under his breath - the music in him always building and _building_like something possessed, and he had no choice but to let it out before it escaped through his pores, tearing him asunder in its wake.

_**06. Skill**_

"I believe that we have had a visitor in the church at night," the priest said carefully, "at first, I thought we were blessed by an angel – for I have never heard the song's equal; but then I saw your son darting across the graveyard when I gave chase . . ."

_**07. Sheer**_

"You see – the mirror is stronger than the monster," Madeleine looked down in horror to see the broken glass that Erik had arranged until the reflections broke the light, returning an image free of scar and deformity – her child's hands were bloody as they pointed, glass embedded deep where the need to banish the monster had dulled his perception of pain.

_**08. Simplicity**_

"Don't you see that he is no ordinary child!" Madeleine hissed, her voice a mad crackle as she held up fistfuls of papers - music notes and architectural plans written in a juvenile scrawl, but past the knowledge that grown men could ever hope to possess.

_**09. Sinister**_

Madeleine could hear the whispers as she passed through the streets – people spitting on her as she passed, and crosses raised in an empty defense; and she held her head high as only a haughty child of the upper class could, clinging to her lost strands of glory as she felt herself unraveling from the Hell God saw fit to grace her with.

_**10. Sorrel**_

"If God," and here the child's voice broke, a bony hand stroking the sorrel fur of the felled dog (who had died protecting one she considered her own from the ignorant of the village), "doesn't save the soul of an animal . . . then why did he create me?"

_**11. Satisfy**_

At nine years of age, he understood that he was the sorrow in his mother's eyes, and the impediment to her living happily; and so with a child's last strand of innocence he took off into the night, leaving as if he were a ghost to her life, half realized and never truly acknowledged.

_**12. Sanguine**_

He felt the blood rush to his face as his mask was drawn away, gasps and exclamations greeting him from the men who held him (for he was starving - and as an animal fully expecting to be struck, but too hungry to care, he had entered the Gypsy camp); each and every word growing like a crescendo until it burst into an unbearable discordance in his mind.

_**13. Sashay**_

In the end, it was his voice that won him his life (for a thief was not to be tolerated), if not his freedom – the lure of such a face one too perfect to pass up; and over the years he spent on display for the masses, he learned how to twine his voice with feeling, with hypnotism – making the notes dance with light and liquid gold until he could leave any audience entranced before him.

_**14. Sepulcher**_

"The Devil's Child!" Erik tensed as the announcement drew the curtain open, covering himself with the rhythms in his mind as he buried himself away from the jeers and the horrified screams; numb to the point where he could not feel the stones the other children his age cast, or the tip of the lash when his keeper 'coaxed' him to perform.

_**15. Semblance**_

"Even here, you can learn control over your cards," the _patrinyengri_muttered, her ancient eyes dark as she showed the insightful child the properties of her healing herbs - and the seemingly mystical harnessing of the laws of nature – giving him an intangible knowledge that could never be taken from him, no matter what his form of captivity.

_**16. Secure**_

"And where would you go if you escaped, boy – who would take you in, tolerate that devil's mark on your face – there's no place for you on this earth, and so you'd best be grateful for all we do for you, and work at earning your keep in return."

_**17. Sample**_

His first samplings with the art of death came in a moment of self defense – feeling the breath of his handler (captor) turn to greasy groans while beetle eyes turned wide and desperate; and even in his youth he could feel the sick thrill of satisfaction – of _power_, as he returned the pain that had been inflicted on him in a fatal hundredfold.

_**18. Sennet**_

He could feel the change ripple through him as he traveled this time – no longer was he a child barefoot on the streets, but a young man restlessly moving from country to country in the way of those who _felt_ for a place instead of _looked_, eyes open to the prospect of rest, if not truly believing in such refuges anymore.

_**19. Spoil**_

Eventually he came to Rome, the eternal city beating in time to the music in his veins, bidding him to stay as he took in the grandeur of art and beauty around him – and when the city's own Master Mason took an interest to him, a small part of him thought that he may have found a place to settle into at long last.

_**20. Sequence**_

"The stone is so ugly when you start," Erik whispered, his voice delighted as he trailed a bare hand over the porous limestone – amazed that such wonders started from something so humbly unappealing and unassuming – like rough diamonds before they were sharpened, hidden gems revealing beauties untold.

_**21. Stage**_

Giovanni chuckled as Erik once more coaxed the simplest of scales from the spinet, trying to get him to repeat the movements – which were awkward and coarse next to the grand tones that his apprentice was able to draw from the instrument with the easiest of melodies.

_**22. Survivor**_

"He came at me out of nowhere – I just tapped him on the shoulder, honest," the worker said moodily, rubbing at his bruised neck, causing Giovanni to frown in worry once more as he understood just how deeply scared the boy was . . . in more ways than one.

_**23. Sobriquet**_

"It's unearthly, Father," Giovanni watched as his daughter hugged her arms around herself (she had grown so thin in the last few weeks – pale and worn as all her efforts proved fruitless), her eyes closed as if in rapture at the heavenly tones that were floating up from the cellar as Erik exorcised his demons in the only way he knew how.

_**24. Sunder**_

"The mask, Erik – I want you to take off the mask," Luciana bid, this time her voice a quiet insistence, her eyes faintly mad as she walked across the roof towards him, hands outstretched like a penitent in prayer, fingers greedy and questing for salvation . . .

_**25. Sooth**_

Death was the silence that could never spill forth a melody, the end of the crescendo, and the haunt of a faded note; it was death that had led him to Rome, and death that once more chased him away from his briefly found happiness – perhaps, it was a stigma he bore on his soul, one never meant to sooth.

_**26. Sanable**_

He now carried haughtiness upon him like one born to it, his tongue sharped and barbed where once he had held silence for the fear of a cross word returned – but it was the aura of mystery (the unconscious stain of lives taken and magicks untold) he wore like the moon wore her tide that drew the crowds to him time and time again.

_**27. Scrumptious**_

For Nadir al Khan, Russia was as miserable as the task he had been sent on (away from his native sands of Persia to fetch a magician for the whim of the spoiled monarch who reigned there), and his opinion only lifted when the masked performer started to unleash his wonders – stretching every law of nature and her mysteries until he was no longer sure what before him was clever illusion or spell.

_**28. Succumb**_

"Your Shah thinks that riches can sway me?" the impertinent young magician hissed as he tossed a bag of gold coins carelessly onto the bench – where it knocked into a small dragon's horde of treasures, emeralds and rubies falling carelessly to the ground.

_**29. Shroud**_

"Only the women of my country hide their face – now, remove the mask," the khanum leaned forward on her pile of silken cushions, her black as sin eyes alight with a strange sort of fascination as Erik revealed himself to her, completely silent as her ladies shrieked in terror.

_**30. Sawder**_

"Something tells me that the Shadow of God, the Most Reverend of the Universe won't notice anything amiss," Erik smirked, his eyes grinning as he pried the precious jewels from the throne, only to replace them with colored glass – his theft clearly for the rise he produced as Nadir gaped at the other man's audacity.

_**31. Scialytic**_

"Maybe if I could create something beautiful enough, then this," and here the magician thrust a vague hand before his mask, "wouldn't matter . . . perhaps there would be some meaning . . . some peace found for me - already the floors of my mind are stained in red . . . there's so much more of it here as of late, and I fear . . . I fear . . ."

_**32. Situate**_

The Court of Mazendaran was old and tired looking, with large ancient buildings yellowing in the harsh dessert sun with the beauty that all decaying things held – and yet, the tired stone seemingly sang under Erik's contemplative touch as he pondered his plans for the new palace the Shah had commissioned.

_**33. Scale**_

Blueprints fell from his hands one after another with obsessive deliriousness; white chalk dusting his black gloves, and ink staining his shirtsleeves (and the rather pricey rug beneath his workstation) – the scale of the vision in his mind the sort that imprinted dreamscapes into mortal mater, a work of art worthy of the masters themselves.

_**34. Silence**_

"You can do better," the khanum hissed into Erik's ear, her carefully chosen words unleashing a deep loathing and a deep pain . . . and an outlet for the violence which Erik normally would have poured into his music or arts beforehand - now, in time to the music that had always been his constant companion, there was only silence, harsh and discordant.

_**35. Synchronize**_

Erik's obsession with building the palace was paralleled only by his loathing for his other employer - the khanum was a woman of dark tastes, and Nadir had lost track of the number of men who had fallen to Erik's hand for the twisted woman's amusement, easily seeing where Erik's well founded hatred of humanity struggled with the bloodlust that he indulged in daily (arena sports . . . brutal tortures . . . a room full of mirrors . . . so many felled for a mind more twisted than Erik's face could ever be).

_**36. Servile**_

Erik could no longer count of the number of times he had changed the designs for the palace on the whim of the Shah – the glorious monument to his mentor's patience was slowly becoming an elaborate toy for a spoiled child as he installed double mirrors and trick corridors, twists and turns and passages that would render their guests bloody in the most horrendous of ways – until even he was aware of how deeply he was in, and unsure of how to remove himself from his predicament.

_**37. Saccharine**_

"He is gloriously hideous, is he not?" the khanum purred sweetly, her tone dark with fascination as she took in the oddly elegant young man before her, seeing the beauty in the unconscious grace Erik held along with the grotesque turn of scars – and twining both together to form an obsession that Nadir feared to see the end of.

_**38. Sickening**_

It was as if Allah had started to entwine his most glorious of gifts to man all inside one body, and then had promptly forgotten about his work – leaving rough, unsoothed matter to twist and warp over the outer shell, forsaking the brilliant mind within to spoil and decay under the weight of the stigma pressing down on him.

_**39. Season**_

"Daroga – it's bloody hotter than normal in this fine part of Hell, and I've dealt with enough spoiled children for the day – I just need ten minutes of peace and silence and not another damn word from you either."

_**40. Sensual**_

He was no Hades to claim a Persephone – he knew this, had always knew this, and still the horror in the harem girl's eyes (the gift of a wife, and the most cruelest mark of 'favor') struck him harder than he would have expected, his normally elegant movements harsh and stilted as he demanded that the girl be taken away – any excuse developed to make sure that she did not come to harm for refusing to become the corpse's bride . . .

_**41. Serendipity**_

"Perhaps Allah led me to you for a reason, my friend," Nadir's almost fond smile only grew as Erik snorted derisively at the statement – and the Daroga felt an almost vicious satisfaction as Erik leaned over the wash basin once more – while he hated to say 'I told you so', he had told the other man not to drink anything he hadn't had tasted first, no matter how high his tolerances for poison truly were.

_**42. Score**_

"I have heard of the tradition of gutting the eyes of a palace architect – tell me, Daroga, but won't that corpse's head be a trophy more fitting to the glory he has built for me?" the Shah chuckled, and Nadir felt his blood run cold as too many secrets spoken and harsh words struck made it impossible for Erik to back away quietly without a score being settled.

_**43. Simpleton**_

"I am not a simpleton, I know that there are times in your life where violence will be demanded of you – but Erik, should you take a life when it is not yours to take, I swear by Allah that I will finish the work that the Shah started, and end your existence myself."

_**44. Sisyphean**_

There had been such an awkward look in Erik's eyes as he heard the ultimatum put before him – his mouth opening and closing as he wondered how to answer (gratitude and a grudging respect, a child not needing of a guardian's hand, but yearning for the straight path nonetheless), and in that moment, Nadir knew that while joining the other man in exile, he had embarked on the hardest of his tasks yet.

_**45. Sanity**_

"Erik, for the love of my sanity and everything good on this earth, get down from there!" Nadir hissed upon seeing the way his friend hung off the side of the belltower, high on the Notre Dame, his great cape billowing as if he were one of Hugo's own gargoyles, and his golden eyes alight with the view of Paris at night – the whisper of _such magnificence_falling from his lips in awe.

_**46. Seize**_

Years ago, he had traveled quickly – eyes greedy to drink in the world, and restless like the roma people he had grown up with – now, he was weary as he and Nadir made their way back into Europe, and eventually France, bewitched as Erik was at hearing his native tongue spoken once more – something almost like _home_planting its insidious idea in his mind, and staying there.

_**47. Saboteur**_

"My name is Charles Garnier, and I am here to propose a deal to you," the curly haired man appeared before Erik holding a very familiar stack of blueprints – the only one of the entries to Napoleon III's call for an architect that had stood out amidst the common of the building minds in Europe; the only entry that seemed to capture the _soul_of music within gilded stone and mortar.

_**48. Softly**_

"You are building your tomb," Nadir said softly, his voice troubled as he took in the epic sweeping of lines on the blueprints before him, no sound coming from the increasingly ghost like man next to him to either sooth his fears or prove them true.

_**49. Silhouette**_

At night he would walk through the building site, passing gloved hands over gilded sculptures in a lover's caress, and looking critically at the beams who would support the acoustics of his vision - and then below, to where the pumps were meticulously draining water from the lake; his was shadow long and ethereal all the while, a specter to anyone unfortunate enough to see.

_**50. Sear**_

He had tried living as a man amongst men; he had even for a time lived as a God amongst mortals, but now, he felt an ancient weariness encroach on him (like the designers who slept within the pyramids), content to dwell as a spirit within the depths of his magnum opus, desperate to feel nothing – or want anything – ever again.


	2. Part II

**Part II**

_**01. Melody**_

In fair Paris' own opera house, Garnier's angels and demons chased each other in an eternal dance while crimson velvet draped marble and gold; the temple to Euterpe reigned over by only a solitary spirit – a specter with Lucifer's own voice who could just barely be seen in the fifth box by those brave enough to look . . .

_**02. Serenade**_

There was a voice that sang her to sleep, that loitered with her on the waking hours and whispered to her the promises of _so much more_past her fingertips – if she would merely raise her own voice in response, and answer the siren's call . . .

_**03. Cadence**_

The girl was hardly eighteen the first time he saw her (just out of the conservatory, and looking for a role in the chorus, no doubt), appearing to be just as lost as he felt as around her the river of those who knew who they were, where they were going, parted around her as if she was one of the islands in the middle of the Seine – unmovable and lost to time.

_**04. Harmony**_

It was an accident at first – answering the girl's calls for an angel while he loitered in the shadow like the blackest of villains, and what was made to be a one time thing (giving comfort where he saw a grief and loneliness to reflect his own) was suddenly so much more as the pure tones of her voice rose and meshed with his – a perfect match, as if made by God for him, and him alone.

_**05. Adagio**_

Ever since she was a child, she had known that she was different . . . needing music as she did like water, like food, like _breath_. . . without it she was an empty shell, devoid of life - a pale waif of a creature that even the ghosts had scoffed at for having no soul.

_**06. Crescendo**_

But now, she drank in the music granted her by divine provision like a woman amongst dessert sands – sure that if she took her fill she would fill the empty and aching gaps around her that still thrived throughout all these years.

_**07. Allegro**_

"Lotte," the voice from her past was quick and light as it landed upon her ears, the handsome young man before her the same child in her memory with sand in his hair as he chased the surf with her - _Raoul_, her cherished childhood friend . . . and favored of her father.

_**08. Legato**_

"I believe that I have found myself in quite the unexpected position," Erik whispered, and Nadir narrowed his eyes at his friend (once again they met on the battlements of the Notre Dame, but this time the masked man was strangely sedate, troubled even), "perhaps you will judge harshly – but I can assure you that this started with the truest of intentions . . . and expectations."

_**09. Sharp**_

"Where did you learn to sing like that?" was the harsh command as she finished her aria, and Christine felt her cheeks burn as she realized just how far she had came from the frightened little girl who could hardly contribute to the chorus – let alone carry the role of the leading lady.

_**10. Flat**_

Her expectations of an angel fell flat as she followed the man before her through her mirror – her eyes entranced and bewitched as she tangled her gaze with the mismatched one holding her; her eyes slipping to the mark of an angel in the harsh white of the mask that cut across his face, hiding his visage from her.

_**11. Bar**_

She raised the expectations of her art significantly, her audience touched by her song as if touched by the divine; but Christine looked away from her admiring crowd, and turned her eyes towards the heavens, seeing only stagelights and the far off shine of the chandelier like her angel's own blessing.

_**12. Tempo**_

Dear God, but that face . . . that _face_ . . . that _voice_. . . her angel's voice . . . yelling at her, anger making golden tones unbearable as the words lashed through her skin to tear right at her heart . . . at her soul, at every part of her that had been bright and innocent before, a defilement more thorough than any of the body every could be.

_**13. Range**_

He wanted her to know – and told her in great detail; the story of the boy in the Gypsy camp, the young man apprenticing in Rome, the magician in Russia, and the assassin and court architect in Persia; he spared her no gory detail, his voice half mad as he held her chin in a tight grip, forcing her to stare at the disfigured whole of his face as he forced his secrets into innocent ears.

_**14. Aria**_

She soared and fell through every composer imaginable as they filled their silences with other character's words; she voicing her anger and her pain, and he his apologies on stolen lines, lips never to breath truths when too much of the false had been built up to tear asunder between them.

_**15. Diva**_

"The ghost's whore," Carlotta simpered as she walked past, her eyes harsh and her words jealous, even as Christine squared her shoulders to return a stare of her own, knowing that if Carlotta truly thought so then she wouldn't dare breathe such words where the phantom might hear.

_**16. Vivace**_

"Ange – _Erik_," she corrected herself, trying to keep her voice light and natural when all she wanted to do was crawl in on herself, sure that any moment she would set his temper off once more; the mercurial spin finally too much for her to keep up with.

_**17. Performance**_

"Do you still not believe that this building is haunted?" Meg retorted as around them stagehands and actors ran too and fro, any and all of the opera's players cast into confusion as around them a ghostly laugh twined like miasma, daring all who had crossed him to do so once again.

_**18. Solo**_

He had vowed long ago that he would not take another life, but his promise seemed further and further away as he watched the boy jump in the role of knight to the damsel, his hands dancing over Christine's even as she innocently gave him the treasure of her lips – a touch forbidden to him, but offered so easily to another . . .

_**19. Duet**_

She buried her head against Raoul's shoulder, filled on the easy sort of affection he offered her when everything within her was lost in turmoil, suddenly so incredibly tired as she was pulled this way and that, ready to simply snap and let the pieces of her fall.

_**20. Timbre**_

The _bois de boulogne_was silent so late at night, none but the two of them out as she entwined her arm through his, their breath mingling on the air with the snowflakes, the crunch of their boots and the almost companionable silence between then as sweet a sound as their thundering chords, a timbre all their own.

_**21. Resonance**_

"My dear," the Persian man clasped her hand in his own, his jade eyes troubled, "just remember that saving his soul does not have to come at the cost of your own."

_**22. Sway**_

Her first two weeks spent beneath the opera house with Erik were a new version of hell as she learned to navigate his temper and her own; the days after that little better until her time above and her continued visits (for Raoul, she told herself – all for his safety, lest Erik made good on his threats) blurred the line between obligation and willingness, pain and confusion and heartache and fascination creating a sick twist of feeling deep within her.

_**23. Rhythm**_

She watched from the doorway as he lost himself to his compositions - his long musician's fingers dancing with the organ keys in a union more intimate than any of lovers, his eyes closed to the melody he heard within him as he tried to translate the epic planes of his mind into something mortal ears could just barely comprehend . . . and she could only stand in the shadows, and appreciate the rise of his soul from afar, for to come any closer would be to surely loose herself completely.

_**24. Octave**_

"He would never hurt me," Christine hissed when Raoul asked, her voice breaking on a high pitch at the ferocity of her own insistence (surprising herself as well as him), for even when he had been at his worst (the night she had unmasked him), he had not laid a hand on her to inflict the pain she had so obviously lashed upon him.

_**25. Encore**_

"Goodnight my dear, and may angels watch over you," her fiancée kissed her goodnight, having no idea how ironic his words truly were.

_**26. Orchestra**_

The orchestra played with a desperate rhythm, held in thrall to the ghost's hold as even the audience tensed upon hearing Hell's own opera played before them – shadows darting in the rafters and an inhumanly beautiful melody lighting up the wings until it was unsure what was played on stage was fiction or fact.

_**27. Strings**_

"Could you truly blame me – you, who know his sins better than any – could you blame me for looking to a life of simple comfort and easy affections when to take Erik's hand would be to constantly battle his unfailing temper and his always lingering madness . . . my god, but the hate he holds for mankind in his eyes – how long before that would take hold of and strangle everything he loves about me?"

_**28. Brass**_

She clutched her crucifix in her small hands as she prayed – desperate for God to erase the blight upon her soul, praying that he would return the innocent girl she was – the girl who was fascinated with angels, before her heart fell in thrall to a man who had spilled the blood of so many . . .

_**29. Percussion**_

"You feel this," was the whispered voice at her ear, a gloriously beautiful sound that ignited her veins and turned her heartbeat into a quick percussion (perfectly in time with his own),"oh, the average man may feel the rise of a crescendo, or tremble at the base – but you, _you_feel music in your veins, it is your soul, Christine . . . almost as it is mine."

_**30. Ballet**_

"It's so romantic, Christine," Meg breathed fondly as they returned to Christine's flat to find the whole of the little home covered in rose petals, crimson and fragrant as they shone like embers in the light of the dying day.

_**31. Tango**_

"And so the Prince Prospero locked he and all of his courtiers in his enchanted ballroom, each and every one spinning in time to the clock that kept beat to the demon waltz; knowing his end was near as Red Death stalked through the impenetrable fortress, crimson trailing in his wake," Poe's words were harshly beautiful on the golden tones of Erik's voice, swirling with the drunken rush of masked dancers around her, and punctuated by his hands at her waist, drawing her into the dance with a possessive spin until she was sure the waltz would never end.

_**32. Trill**_

"No, _this_ – this is as much a lie as the angel was," she shouted, mask in her hand and fairly shaking as her rage overflowed her horror, filling her until she burst – screaming and seething and lost to the thick flood of _feeling_within her; higher than any crest of a crescendo he had ever cursed her ears with.

_**33. Staccato**_

"Obviously, this whole nonsense of singing will have to cease," Comte Philippe de Chagny fairly sneered as he looked his brother's intended up and down, Raoul's unthinkingly cheerful _'without a doubt'_a harsh and staccato thing upon her ears as she clenched her hands tightly together in her lap, forcing herself to remain smiling.

_**34. Requiem**_

"They will kill everything that lets you thrive, Christine – your music is your soul, and they will crush it more unfeelingly than you have ever accused me of . . . you foolish girl – but cast me away, but never the gift that your God felt moved to grace you with."

_**35. Presto**_

She felt as if she were a tiny ship, tossed about the violent waves at sea, even as the wind tried to unfurl her sails once more – but, oh, how could the benevolent wind understand how glorious it could be to drown?

_**36. Atonal**_

He did not look as threatening when he was at rest – the handsome half of his unmarred face was younger in repose, and the elegant lines of his form had lost their tautness (as if permanently ready to ward off a blow) – and a part of her was bold enough to reach out to hesitantly touch his mask, feeling the mark of his pain as her own.

_**37. Sonata**_

The porcelain was heavy and chilled, his skin even colder still – _like a corpse_, the child in her mind still moaned in fright – and for a moment she wondered if he could feel the heat from her hands as she passed her touch over him, as gentle as any song.

_**38. Tone-Deaf**_

"Your voice is very pretty, Christine – but that same quality that lets you hit those notes also hurts my ears when you are standing right next to me," Raoul had an earnest grin on his face, but she felt her own smile slowly fall as she read the empty appreciation he held – and always would – for her life's greatest joy.

_**39. Black-Tie**_

Under her careful hands as she tied her child's cravat (a young man now at sixteen, and quite the Adonis), Gustave looked up at her with annoyed eyes (so much like his father's that she had to fight the pang in her chest), "I don't know why we have to try to hard – sometimes I wish that I was born horribly ugly, at least then they'd hear my _music_ instead of just seeing _me_."

_**40. Gown**_

"You said to the boy yourself that you did not have the strength to leave – so I shall take the choice from you," Erik muttered, his resplendent voice half mad as he flung the wedding dress at her, much to her horror.

_**41. Nocturne**_

Up above, she could call the connection she shared with him unholy, but to deny it in _this_moment, (where the music thundered around them, and his voice meshed with hers as if created for and by her alone) would be a sin – for this was her completion and her half, her whole found in his passions, in his music, his glory hers to share and make soar as an unearthly beautiful swell of sound rose between them, heaven sent in the depths of the earth. - even his disfigurement marked him for her and her alone, made by God and saved from the attention of any other.

_**42. Ostinato**_

"I don't love him," Christine repeated, her voice trembling as an awful shock of feeling spiked in her, and as she always did, she pushed the feeling away for what was good – what was _right_, knowing that the truth of her emotions was becoming harder and harder to convince him of.

_**43. Encore**_

She returned to the house on the lake a week before her wedding to find the home ravished and defiled – sheets of music (his life's work) torn to pieces, and the grand organ (the one he had built by hand, angels and demons and roses etched into the brass pipes) smashed, her own room had been looted, and dear God, but there was blood on the floor . . . and finally, she let herself weep her requiem to the ghosts remaining, completely defeated.

_**44. Practice**_

The cast cared little for the ghost's opera they were to preform, she knew – its genius was ahead of its time, and while it was torn asunder by those who should have nurtured it, Christine felt herself amazed and humbled upon reading the notes . . . how . . . how had he had been able to write something so incredibly breathtaking, even as he hated her so completely for her betrayal?

_**45. Maestro**_

Her angelic maestro, her dark friend was gone in that moment – _Erik_was only there, everything dark within him boiling to the surface (like an animal finally backed into a corner) as he demanded her hand in exchange for Raoul's life . . . and oh dear god, but she would never forget the pain in his eyes as she seethed at his hate – for in that moment, hate she did as well as he.

_**46. Notes**_

"America?" Erik repeated incredulously when Nadir asked him what he would do next, the notes he struck onto the broken piano discordant as he seethed, "now whatever would I go and do that for?"

_**47. Opus**_

The first kiss was to save a life, an agreement sealed as if by a pomegranate's stain; the second kiss was for her, and her alone – exorcising his demons while giving fuel for her own to thrive anew – for he kissed her almost desperately, with the tenderness of an innocent, and the passion of a man who understood that she was his completely in that moment . . . should he choose not to finally set her free.

_**48. Overture**_

_This_was what it was to love completely; this was what it was to hold another life before your own – this was what it was to be the man whom she had always wanted him to be . . . and in the years to come he would honor her decision, the broken man put back together for a stronger copy – one worthy of her (built up where she had finally torn herself down).

_**49. Entr'acte**_

He had won, but he was far from the victor, Raoul knew – for the broken girl had had left with was slowly revealing a young woman forged from the blackest fires – he did not recognize the Christine with him as they sailed away, and something insidious whispered that while she was his, she had never been further away from him.

_**50. Finale**_

As much as he would always haunt her – he was more; he was the spirit that had infused the great building he had crafted with its elegance and mystery, and he was the rise and the passion to her own voice – the phantom that lurked in her soul possessed her as well as it had haunted the opera house - but now, the loss of him was one which the world would only ever understand in passing – for with the death of the ghost, so died the spirit of the great _palais garnier_ – never to be the same again.


End file.
